Green Bay went into the 1969 campaign with a theme - The Pack Will Be Back. Bumper stickers and a media campaign highlighted the new theme. For half the season, the dream looked real as the Packers sat at 5-2, a game behind Minnesota. Three straight losses in November put an end to any playoff hopes. By winning three of their last four, Green Bay managed to finish third for the second straight season. More and more players from the championship days were leaving the scene - Jerry Kramer, Forrest Gregg, Zeke Bratkowski and Bob Skoronski retired, Ron Kostelnik and Tom Brown were traded. Gregg would come out of retirement, but the exodus was underway. Vince Lombardi also left the stage, as he became the head coach and GM of the Washington Redskins in February. Head Coach Phil Bengtson was named general manager in March.

RICH MOORE - 1ST-ROUND BUST FOR THE AGES

As the glory days of the Lombardi era continued to fade more and more into the rearview mirror, the Packers continued to struggle with finding replacements for their aging stars. Along the defensive line, Willie Davis (34) and Henry Jordan (34) were showing their age, while Lionel Aldridge, Bob Brown and Jim Weatherwax were showing no signs of being of similar talent or were battling nagging, consistent injuries. The search for another replacement set the stage for one of the worst draft moves in franchise history. Out of Villanova University, Rich Moore was a 6-foot-6, 280-pound giant, and head coach Phil Bengtson pictured him as another Merlin Olsen. Green Bay took him with the 12th pick in the '69 draft over the objections of the scouting staff. They passed on such future stars as Fred Dwyer, Gene Washington and Ted Hendricks. "Rich Moore was a disaster," said Pat Peppler, the team's director of player personnel at the time. "Phil Bengtson fell in love with his size." After joining the Packers, he lasted only 20 games over two years. He never started one game, and never recorded a sack. By the summer of 1971, it was clear Moore would never live up to his pre-draft billing, even when the team tried to move him to the offensive line. He suffered strained knee ligaments, and the Packers were lucky to find one team willing to deal with. They sent him to New England for LB John Bramlett, who had been the Patriots' defensive player of the year in 1970 and was a two-time AFL All-Star. In a sad ending to the story, Moore never played for the Pats, after being placed on their injured reserve, and Bramlett was cut five weeks after being acquired by Green Bay.

Joe Namath graced the cover of this particular publication in the summer of 1969, and below are the pages dedicated to the Green Bay Packers. This season would prove to be another difficult post-Lombardi era year for our team, as they would finish with an 8-6-0 record for third place in the N.F.L. Central Division. The years of relative futility had only just begun. (SOURCE: Packerville, USA)

Something Packer fans had a hard time getting used to in 1969 - Vince Lombardi coaching the Washington Redskins

"Next up in the vast collection of books about the Green Bay Packers is a rare volume that we didn’t know existed until a few years ago. It is Young Sports Photographer with the Green Bay Packers, by John Biever (with George Vecsey). Biever is the son of long-time Packers official team photographer Vernon Biever, who sadly left us during the team’s championship season of 2010. Still behind the camera, John Biever currently works for Sports Illustrated." - Packerville, USA for more photos and content

On the heels of his very successful diary of the 1967 season, Instant Replay, Green Bay Packers legendary G Jerry Kramer wrote Farewell to Football. After eleven seasons with the Packers, Kramer had decided to retire from the National Football League and enter the business world. This book tells of that transitional season of 1968 and his moving on in life. - Packerville, USA for more photos and content

"We have a much lesser known work in our presentation of books about the Green Bay Packers. Carroll Dale Scores Again! is about the life (up to that point) of the Packers’ All-Pro WR in the Lombardi Era, with an emphasis on his Christian faith. It even boasts a Forward written by Coach Lombardi himself." - Packerville, USA for more photos and content